found this on the internets somewhere… about mattis:
a story about sec of defense jim mattis:
I checked in to Third Battalion, Seventh Marines in Twentynine Palms, California in 1994. It was 125 degrees in July in the high desert; everyone was in the field. This was a hard place, for hard men training for the hardest of jobs.
Then-Colonel Jim Mattis, the Seventh Marines regimental commander, called for me to come see him.
I was not only just a brand-new Captain, but I was an aviator in an infantry regiment. I was a minor light in the Seventh Marines firmament: I was not in any measure a key player.
I arrived early, as a Captain does when reporting to a Colonel, and waited in his anteroom. I convinced myself there what this would be: a quick handshake, a stern few sentences on what I was to do while there, and then aslap on the back with a “Go get ‘em, Tiger!” as he turned to the next task at hand. This was a busy guy.
Five minutes, tops.
Colonel Mattis called for me. He stood to greet me, and offered to go himself to get coffee for me. He put a hand on my shoulder; gave me, over my protestations, his own seat behind his desk; and pulled up a chair to the side. He actually took his phone off the hook—something I had thought was just a figure of speech—closed his office door, and spent over an hour knee-to-knee with me.
Colonel Mattis laid out his warfighting philosophy, vision, goals and expectations. He told me how he saw us fighting—and where—and how he was getting us ready to do just that. He laid out history, culture, religion and politics, and he saw very clearly not only where we would fight, but how Seventh Marines, a desert battalion, fit into that fight.
Many years later, when Seventh Marines got into that fight, he was proven precisely right. It would not be the last time.